Economics: Websites

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Comprehensive, or 'meta', sites

Economics: About.com
Nice introductory articles ...
Economic Meta Search Engine
Martin Zagler, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien. Uses Google, but is a tailored, or customized, search.
RFE: Resources for Economists on the Internet
Bill Goffe, SUNY Oswego

Economics blogs

There are many more, obviously. These tend to be more popular than scholarly. For a larger selection, try the first three links which are to lists of blogs.

Top 100 Economic Blogs (CurrencyTrading.Net)
This is a useful list because they've made the effort to organize the blogs by ideology, or by focus: liberal, conservative, libertarian; international, policy, business, environment, news, etc.
Conscience of a Liberal (Paul Krugman, NYT)
"Politics and Economics"
EconoMonitor (The Street)
Economix - Explaining the Science of Everyday Life (NYT)
EconTalk - Economics podcasts for daily life (Russ Roberts)
Library of Economics and Liberty
Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner)
Planet Money (NPR)

US governmental sites

Beige Book
(written by the Federal Open Market Committee, part of the Federal Reserve; formally titled Current Economic Conditions by Federal Reserve District)
BEA: Bureau of Economic Analysis
BLS: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Department of Labor
Economic Report of the President
An annual report ...
Economic Indicators - US Census Bureau
Formerly called the "Economic Statistics Briefing Room"
Federal Reserve Board of Governors
FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data; from the St. Louis Fed)
Links to all Federal Reserve Bank sites
SOI Tax Stats Historical Tables, from the IRS
Statement of Income data.

International organizations

Research organizations, or 'think tanks'

This is not a comprehensive list, just a sampling.

The Global "Go-To Think Tanks" 2015 (pdf)
The report is written by James G. McGann, director of The Think Tanks and a Civil Society Program (International Relations Program, U of Pennsylvania).
Page 74-75: top 60 US think tanks.
NIRA's World Directory of Think Tanks
Includes ~ 450 think tanks from 100 countries. Published by the National Institute for Research Advancement.
American Enterprise Institute
Brookings Institution
Economic Policy Institute
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Urban Institute

Time series data

The sites below are mostly free. For a list of the subscription time series (data) databases that the Libraries provide, click here.

Census Data
Works best with Chrome.
Data.Census.gov is the new platform for data from Census Bureau. (American FactFinder was retired in March, 2020.)
Although this is a wonderful resource, because so much is there, expect to spend some time figuring it out. Therefore, below are links to the websites for individual surveys from the Census Bureau.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Data
Employment and unemployment, productivity, wages, employment costs; producer and consumer price indices.
Includes Historical Employment Data from the "A" Tables of the Current Population Surveys.
Current Industrial Reports
From the Census Bureau; not published after 2011.
Production and shipment statistics on selected products. Most of these series only go back to the late 1980's or early 1990's online, but farther back in time in print.
Economagic.com
(Ted Bos, University of Alabama at Birmingham).
START HERE: the search function on this site is great. Unfortunately, data provenance and downloading require a paid subscription ... But this site is very helpful for finding out what's "out there".
EPI Datazone
From the Economic Policy Institute. Current labor market, family income, price, wage, GDP, foreign trade, and federal deficit data.
FAOSTAT
From the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. Contains international time-series statistics on food; e.g. production, fertilizer and pesticides, land use, forest and fishery products, and agricultural machinery.
FRB: Statistics & Historical Data
From the Federal Reserve Board. Commercial paper, interest rates, foreign exchange rates, industrial production and capacity utilization.
FRED - St. Louis Federal Reserve Board Data
Current and historical U.S. economic and financial data.
Health Data Interactive (CDC)
Births, deaths, and more ... all about the US.
ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization)
"... provides multiple datasets with annual and infra-annual labour market statistics for over 100 indicators and 230 countries, areas and territories."
The time series are not long (some only go back a few years), and there is no data available for some countries and some variables, but still, it's a valuable resource.
IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series)
From the Minnesota Population Center.
Here are three brief Youtube videos on how to use this site. There is also an MPC Youtube channel.
ITU Statistics
From the ITU (International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies – ICTs).
See also their ICT-Eye website, where you can customize charts/graphs for more recent data.
NBER Macrohistory database
3500 historical time series, mostly pre-1950s.
NNDC Climate Data Online
Historic weather data from the National Climatic Data Center of the NOAA. (Free access to data for '.edu' domain names.)
Penn World Table 6.2
Provides purchasing power parity and national income accounts converted to international prices for 188 countries for some or all of the years 1950-2004 (year 2000 as base).
TranStats
From the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
UKDS (UK Data Service)
Another way to get to data from the World Bank, UN, IMF, OECD. Provides a uniform interface for the free databases from these providers. (Not all are free.)
UNCTADStats
UNESCO Institute for Statistics Data
International statistics on education, culture and communication.
Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics
Data culled from the printed reports from the FBI (the Uniform Crime Reports of the United States ).
USDA Economics, Statistics and Market Information System
Ward's Auto - Public Data
This trade group makes a few time series available for free. See Ward's Automotive Yearbook for more.

Working papers

RePEc's EconPapers
"the world's largest collection of on-line Economics working papers, journal articles and software."
Federal Reserve Board Working Papers

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - Working Papers from NBER This link opens in a new window
Working papers of researchers at the NBER.
The topical areas that NBER focuses on are: Aging, Asset Pricing, Children, Corporate Finance, Development of the American Economy, Economics of Education, Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Environmental and Energy Economics, Health Care, Health, Industrial Organization, International Finance and Macroeconomics, International Trade and Investment, Labor Studies, Law and Economics, Monetary Economics, Political Economy, Productivity, Stocks, Bonds, and Foreign Currency/Asset Pricing, and Taxation/Public Economics/Government Spending.

RePEc
An index database to working papers, journal articles, and software components. Indexes papers from the IMF and NBER among others.
Social Science Research Network